A photo of a secret CIA prison. A map designed to help visitors reach Malibu’s notoriously inaccessible public beaches. Guidebooks to factories, prisons, and power plants in upstate New York. An artificial reef fabricated from 500 tons of industrial waste. These are some of the more than one hundred projects represented in Experimental Geography, a groundbreaking collection of visual research and mapmaking from the past ten years. Experimental Geography explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether). This lavishly illustrated book features more than a dozen maps; artwork by Francis Alÿs, Alex Villar, and Yin Xiuzhen; and recent projects by The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Raqs Media Collective, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The collection is framed by essays by bestselling author Trevor Paglen, Jeffrey Kastner, and editor Nato Thompson.

Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

Arts & Photography

Thompson, Nato

Independent Curators International

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Melville House

War, Evil, and the End of History

From the maverick author of the international bestseller Who Killed Daniel Pearl? — "a gripping blend of reportage and philosophy," according to The New York Times — comes another startlingly original work of literature. In WAR, EVIL AND THE END OF HISTORY, Bernard-Henri Lévy continues his daring investigation into the breeding grounds of terrorism with a series of riveting first-person reports from five of the world's most horrific "forgotten" war zones. In Sri Lanka, he conducts a clandestine interview with a terrified young woman escaped from a suicide-bomber training camp . . . he journeys, blindfolded, into the Colombian jungle to interview a psychotic drug lord who considers himself the successor to Che Guevara and fronts a bloodthirsty "guerilla" army . . . Lévy surreptitiously observes the nameless slaves working the diamond mines that fund an endless war in Angola . . . airdrops into a rebel stronghold in the blockaded Nuba mountains of the Sudan . . . and reports on the ongoing carnage in Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. But Lévy is more than just a journalist: as France's leading philosopher, he follows the reports with a series of intensely personal and probing "reflections" considering how, in an enlightened, cultured, and well-informed society, these wars have acquired such a perverse "non-meaning." He considers war literature from Stendhal, Hemingway, Proust and others, and issues an excoriating response to those who have glorified it. He reconsiders his own background as a student revolutionary in Paris in May 1968, and as a 22-year-old war reporter in Bangladesh. And, in one of the book's most moving passages, he recounts his travels with Ahmad Massoud, the anti-Taliban Afghan leader assassinated hours before the September 11 attacks. Already a huge bestseller in Europe, WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is the work of a scintillating intellect at the height of its powers. Bernard-Henri Lévy's previous book foresaw today's headlines about Pakistan's secret trading of nuclear technology and the nexus of terrorist groups behind the murder of Daniel Pearl. WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is his brilliant foray into the next danger zones.

War, Evil, and The End of History

History

Lévy, Bernard-Henri

Americas

"A welcome contrarian take on the state of contemporary American prose."-The Wall Street Journal The funny and devastating debunking of high "literary" prose stylists, including Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, that caused a literary furor.

A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose

Literature & Fiction

B. R. Myers

History & Criticism

How did poets in the capital of American poetry respond to the tragedies of September 11, 2001? This survey of New York's poetry community provides a unique snapshot, commemorating the first anniversary of the event and featuring many of the most important poets of our day. Amongst the 45 poets featured are current Pulitzer Prize for Poetry-winner Stephen Dunn, the editor of the Best American Poetry series David Lehman, National Book Award finalist Alicia Ostriker, Jean Valentine and the poets laureate of Brooklyn and Queens. Their poems—most of which have never been published before—cover an extraordinary variety of responses to the challenging experience of writing and living in the aftermath of tragedy. Some are eyewitness accounts by poets who were on the scene. Others more indirectly touch upon the events, and reflect the somber resonance of the tragedy's impact upon life in the city. Coming on the first anniversary of the attacks, the book is meant to both examine the state of the art in America's poetry scene, and provide a revealing cross-section of a particular cultural moment. But it will also speak to a greater need on an occasion that will surely be one of the most sensitive and difficult in our nation's history. The editors, in their foreword, cite the remarkable gravitation toward poetry that was visible everywhere in the days after the attacks—on the walls of firehouses, in letters-to-the-editor at local newspapers, even scrawled in the dusty ash covering lower Manhattan. Residents across the nation then were drawn to poetry. This book will be of interest to both general and academic audiences, and will speak to that widely expressed impulse toward poetry.

Poetry After 9-11: An Anthology of New York Poets

Poetry

"The sonnet, the phoenix of poetry, burns and rises in Star Black...molten and malleable [she] expands syntax and compresses discourse, pulsing at the brink of 21st century poetics...With only the straps of her rhymes to hang on to, she dares—and flies."– Molly PeacockDefying trends by writing scrupulously sculpted poems that revel in form and are unabashedly beautiful, playful and smart, Star Black, one of the most popular poets in the New York poetry scene, kicks off Melville House Publishing's NEW YORK POETS SERIES by focusing her edgy intellect on the sonnet.Her collection Ghostwood presents 48 chiseled gems that show off the many reasons why she is considered one of the leading practitioners of the sonnet writing in English today.Black's poems celebrate nature as well as life in the city. They link touching characters and explore the boundaries of love. They keen in grief and anger—as in her searing poem about the WTC attacks, "Perfect Weather"—and they bound into hope, as in the quirky beauty, "Asylum."In short, Black—who is also renowned as a photo-journalist whose work has appeared regularly in The New York Times and elsewhere—is the perfect example of the kind of poet highlighted by the NEW YORK POETS SERIES: a poets' poet who also has a huge popular following in Manhattan, and whose work is ready to be appreciated by a larger international audience.

Ghostwood (New York Poets)

Black, Star

The international bestseller The New York Times called "a gripping synthesis of philosophy and reportage," Lévy's undercover investigation into the gruesome killing of journalist Daniel Pearl leads to stunning revelations about Pakistan's secret nuclear arms trading.

Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

Charlotte Mandell

Africa

Our Nun

A quirky, wickedly funny coming-of-age story starring a teenaged farm boy who's half-Holden Caufield and half-Huck Finn and who has to think fast when things go awry in the heartland . . . really awry . . . .

Laughner, Rob

Humor & Satire

"Maggie Balistreri takes dead aim at the 'Like, whatever' faction of English speakers . . . clear-minded grammar wins out in the end. Bravo."-Garrison Keillor This scathingly funny dictionary of euphemisms translates the, like, banalities of contemporary speech.

The Evasion-English Dictionary

Humor & Entertainment

Balistreri, Maggie

Humor

The legendary book about writing short stories, by the Irish master of the form, is back in print! A virtual master class in which the witty O'Connor discusses technique and his favorite writers, including Chekhov, Hemingway, and Joyce.

The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story

O'Connor, Frank

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Books by Melville House